Age 9-11

This novel, written by novelist Louisa Young and her 10-year-old daughter Isabel Adomakoh Young, hit the headlines because it earned a spectacularly large advance. It is the first in a trilogy, and its USP is that the hero, Charlie Ashanti, can speak to cats — an idea of vast appeal — and not only to cats, but to lions. Charlie has smart scientist parents (his father is Ghanaian, his mother is English) and his rich heritage of two cultures is clearly an advantage. Charlie comes home one day to find his parents gone, and learns through the feline grapevine that they have been kidnapped. Escaping the repulsive teenage villain who has been given charge of him, he sets out to rescue his parents, and finds himself on a circus boat sailing to Paris (an episode full of lively characterisation and descriptive colour) and then on the Orient Express with a pride of liberated circus lions who have agreed to help him. The novel is set in the future, although the tone of the book is freshly contemporary — Isabel’s contribution, perhaps. Its weakness is that it really does feel like the first in a trilogy — it ends hopefully, but with no sense of closure.

LIONBOY by Zizou Corder

(Puffin £12.99)

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• Superfreakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• Vincent van Gogh’s letters show the soul of the artist